Christina Fernandez, detail of “Suburban Nightscapes #2” (2023), courtesy of the artist.

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Keynote: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill in conversation
with Ken Gonzales-Day

Friday, October 25, 2024 5:30–7:00 pm MST • Center for Creative Photography Auditorium & online

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill is a Latina/British/Venezuelan art historian, curator, and writer in modern and contemporary art, focusing on Latin American and Latinx art. She has a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex, England, and is Associate Professor of Museum Studies and Art History and Director of the Northlight Gallery, Arizona State University.

Ken Gonzales-Day's interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems from lynching photography to museum displays. Gonzales-Day’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the collections of the Getty, LACMA, MOCA LA, MoMA, The Smithsonian NPG & SAAM, in D.C. Monographs include Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 and Profiled. Gonzales-Day was awarded a Guggenheim in 2017.

Thank You to our Sponsors

Major support for this program is generously provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Additional support is provided by the Center for Creative Photography; the School of Art, University of Arizona; and PN members.

About the Symposium

Location

All events will take place at the Center for Creative Photography unless otherwise noted in the schedule below.

Center for Creative Photography
1030 North Olive Road
Tucson, AZ 85721

Questions?

For any questions about the symposium, please email us.

Photography Network will convene its fourth annual symposium in the Sonoran Desert Borderlands city of Tucson, Arizona in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. The event will be hybrid (in-person and virtual) and presented in English.

Grounded in the themes that arise in three CCP-organized exhibitions of Latinx photography that will be on view this fall (Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva, curated by Elizabeth Ferrer; Chicana Photographers LA, curated by Sybil Venegas; and Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature, curated by Sybil Venegas and Christopher Velasco), “In Relation” will consider how communities are made visible, defined, and constituted through photography.  

In her book Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History (2021), Elizabeth Ferrer writes: “As the photographer/subject relationship shifted from outsider/insider to insider/insider [in the late twentieth century], the photograph became less an ethnographic document than an autonomous and self-validating form of individual and community expression.” This shift highlights questions of agency, circulation, diaspora, and storytelling that are relevant to the practice and institutional interpretation of photography. 

Taking this idea as a point of departure, this symposium features presentations on the ways artists have used photography to probe issues of visibility, belonging, and representation; on the potential for photography to forge connections across distances of all kinds; and on photography as a form of community activism.

Traveling to Tucson

  • Airports

    Attendees can choose to fly into either Phoenix or Tucson. Located only 20 minutes from the CCP, Tucson International Airport (TUS) is much smaller and more convenient. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) is approximately 2 hours north of Tucson by car, but flying into Phoenix is often less expensive and offers more options. Please note that there is no train between Tucson and Phoenix. 

    A complimentary shuttle from Phoenix to Tucson will be provided for those who fly into Phoenix on Friday, October 25th and attend the 1pm tour of the Laura Aguilar exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum. The shuttle will depart Phoenix Art Museum at 2pm.

    Alternatively, attendees flying into Phoenix can take a shuttle to Tucson with Groome Transportation, which offers passenger van transportation from the Phoenix airport to Tucson 16 times per day. You must book your ticket in advance. This webpage has directions for how to find the shuttle once you’ve arrived at the Phoenix airport (scroll to “How to Find us at PHX”).

  • A sprawling grid, Tucson is most easily traversable by car and there tend to be abundant Ubers/Lyfts.

    Tucson's Sun Tran bus system and the Sun Link Streetcar are FREE and great ways to visit the university campus and avoid campus parking. Closest stops:

  • On Friday, attendees should park at the Park Avenue Garage and use the pedestrian underpass underneath Speedway to get to the CCP. See garage rates here.


    On Saturday and Sunday, attendees may park for free behind the CCP at Surface Lot 3039.

  • We have arranged courtesy rates for two nights at the Westward Look Resort (check-in on Friday, October 25 and check out on Sunday, October 27). The resort is a 20-minute drive from the CCP in the Catalina Foothills, which span east-west along the Santa Catalina Mountains at the city’s northern edge. A limited number of suites with 2 doubles or 1 king are available. Please use this link to book.

    Tucson has a broad selection of AirBnbs and VRBOs at various price points within walking distance or a short drive to the CCP. There are many listings with multiple bedrooms, should you consider booking lodging with fellow colleagues.

    Some particularly pleasant and walkable neighborhoods near the university and downtown include Sam Hughes, West University and 4th Avenue, Iron Horse, Pie Allen, Barrio Viejo, Armory Park, and Blenman-Elm. Public transportation in Tucson is free, including the free streetcar that stops one block from the CCP at the intersection of East 2nd Street/North Olive Road and travels through downtown to the Mercado District.

    If you have specific questions about neighborhoods, please reach out to Emilia Mickevicius, CCP Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, at emiliam@arizona.edu.

  • Thanks to generous funding from the Terra Foundation, Photography Network is able to provide a limited amount of funding for participants requiring financial assistance to attend the 2024 symposium "In Relation: Photography's Communities" in person. For more information and instructions on how to apply, please visit this page and submit the required information by August 14, 2024 for consideration.

  • VisitTucson.org and ThisIsTucson.com are good resources for information about area activities, attractions, restaurants, and more.

Symposium Schedule

All events marked with an asterisk* will be live streamed for online symposium registrants.

Friday, October 25, 2024

Optional Opening Tours (simultaneous)

In Phoenix:

1:00–2:00 pm MST

Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature Exhibition Tour,
Norton Photography Gallery, Phoenix Art Museum
Emilia Mickevicius, Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography,
Center for Creative Photography and Phoenix Art Museum

Sign Up

2:00–4:00 pm MST

Group shuttle from Phoenix Art Museum to University of Arizona campus

In Tucson:

2:00–4:00 pm MST

Print Viewing and Conservation Tour, CCP
Dana Hemmenway, Arthur J. Bell Head of Conservation; Bryanna Knotts, Assistant Conservator; and Kappy Mintie, Head of Collections, CCP

Featuring archival items and prints by Lola Alvarez Bravo, Flor Garduño, Anthony Hernandez, Graciela Iturbide, and Ricardo Valverde.

Sign Up

Convocation:

4:00–5:00 pm MST

Registration, CCP Lobby

5:00–5:30 pm MST

Welcome, CCP Auditorium*
Todd Tubutis, Director, Center for Creative Photography
Katherine Bussard and Anne Strachan Cross, PN Co-Chairs

Introduction, CCP Auditorium*
Josie Johnson and Emilia Mickevicius, Symposium Co-Organizers

Announcement of Book Awards & Project Grants,
CCP Auditorium*
Candice Jansen, PN Awards Coordinator

5:30–7:00 pm MST

Keynote: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill in conversation with Ken Gonzales-Day,
CCP Auditorium* 

7:00–8:30 pm MST

Reception, CCP Lobby
Refreshments provided

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Morning Welcome: 8:30–9:00 am MST

Registration, CCP Lobby
Light Breakfast provided

Panel 1: 9:00-10:45 am MST

Seeing, Feeling, Community, CCP Auditorium*
Moderator: Christian Ramírez, Assistant Curator of Contemporary and Community Art Initiatives, PhxArt

Hinda Seif, “Diana Solís, Chicago/Mexico City: Latina/Mexicana Lesbian Feminist/LGBTQ Life & Activism through a Transnational Lens (1979–2000)”

Hinda Seif is Professor of Sociology/Anthropology at UI Springfield and University of Illinois Press faculty board member. Publications: Exhibit (with Diana Solís) and article.

Shana Lopes, “Alejandro Cartagena and the US-Mexico Border: Representing Communities, Artificial Barriers, and the American Dream”

Shana Lopes, PhD, is an Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Jaime Acosta Gonzalez, “Concrete Lives, Abstract Communities: Migration and Social Reproduction in Christina Fernandez's Lavanderia (2002–2003)”

Jaime Acosta Gonzalez teaches in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. His research focuses on the politics of aesthetics, thinking through how art and literature make visible processes of racialization and accumulation central to the historical development of capitalism.

China Medel, “Brown Time: Veteranas_and_Rucas and Latinx Image Archiving in the Face of Gentrification”

China Medel is a queer, Chicana, scholar-mama, and an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Northern Arizona University. She specializes in visual culture, Latinx Studies, and border studies.

Panel 2: 11:00 am-12:15 pm MST

Archival Homecomings, CCP Auditorium*
Moderator: Verónica Reyes-Escudero, Head of Special Collections, University of Arizona Libraries

Emily Voelker, “Photograph and / as Relation: Lakȟóta Kinship, Archives & History Keeping across Generations”

Emily Voelker is Assistant Professor of Art History at UNC Greensboro, where she teaches across histories of photography and the global nineteenth century.

Deanna Ledezma, “Archival Resurgences: Latinx Communities and Photographic Gatherings in Chicago”

Deanna Ledezma, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois Chicago. Learn more about her research and writing.

Josh Rios, “Kinship Research: An Altar Album”

Josh Rios is a founding member of Sonic Insurgency Research Group and associate adjunct faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Lunch Break • 12:15-1:15 pm MST

Exhibition Tours: 1:15–2:15 pm MST

Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva Tour,
Center Galleries, CCP

Chicana Photographers LA! Tour,
Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery, CCP

Sign Up

Workshop: 2:30–4:00 pm MST

Curating Community, CCP Auditorium
Moderator: Katherine Bussard, Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography, Princeton University Art Museum

Kaila Schedeen, “The Communal Tides of In Conversation: Will Wilson at the Delaware Art Museum”

Kaila T. Schedeen, (she/her/hers) is the Exhibitions and Collections Manager at Art Galleries at Black Studies, The University of Texas at Austin.

Rebecca Senf and Lizzy Guevara, “The Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva Community Advisory”

Rebecca Senf is the Chief Curator and Lizzy Guevara is the Photographic Education Research Fellow at the CCP.

Erin Northington, "A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence - Care, Collaboration, and Community"

 Erin Northington (she/her) is the Susan and Stephen Wilson Associate Director of Campus and Community Education and Engagement at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University.

Walking Tour: 5:00–7:00 pm MST

Borderlandia Tucson Origins Tour,
La Casa Cordova, 175 N Meyer Ave, Tucson, AZ 85701

Sign Up

Sunday, October 27, 2024

Morning Welcome: 8:30–9:00 am MST

Registration, CCP Lobby
Light Breakfast provided

Panel 3: 9:00-10:15 am MST

Photography as Connection, CCP Auditorium*
Moderator: Julio César Morales, Executive Director & Co-Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson

Heather Diack, “Being with One Another: Photography, Displacement, and Relationality”

Heather Diack is Associate Professor of History of Art, Photography and Visual Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Christina Hiromi Hobbs, “Light from Above: Vernacular Photographs of the Japanese American Incarceration from the Archive of Shigeko Kumamoto”

Christina Hiromi Hobbs is a curator and writer based in the Bay Area. She is a PhD candidate in Art History at Stanford University.

Tatiana Reinoza, “La sangre llama: Transnational Archival Formations and Central American Families”

Tatiana Reinoza is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Notre Dame.

Roundtable: 10:30 am–12:15 pm MST

Artist Activism: William Camargo, Lisa Elmaleh, and Raul Rodriguez in conversation, CCP Auditorium
Moderator: Gia Del Pino, Marketing Specialist, CCP; PhD Student in Art & Visual Culture Education, University of Arizona

William Camargo is a lens-based artist and educator born and raised in Anaheim, California. His work focuses on gentrification, police violence, Chicanx/Latinx histories and his work comments on the hegemonic history of photography through archival research and performative interventions that live as photographs.

Lisa Elmaleh (Guggenheim Fellow, 2024) is a large format photographer. Her current body of work, Promised Land, interrogates the myth of the American Dream from the perspective of the borderland environs, the people seeking asylum in the United States, and humanitarian aid groups engaged in helping migrants with vital needs.

Raul Rodriguez is an artist and publisher who works with photography and multimedia techniques to share stories about communities, identity and human resilience. His projects explore topics that are closely linked to his personal and cultural experience as a first gen Mexican-American. Raul is an MFA candidate at Texas Christian University and is the editor of the photographic platform, Deep Red Press that focuses on underrepresented and photographic artists in Texas.

Lunch Break: 12:15-1:15 pm MST

Panel 4: 1:15–2:55 pm MST

(Un)Belongings, CCP Auditorium*
Moderator: Jeehey Kim, Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Arizona

Daniel Menzo, “Compañeros in the Studio: Benjamín de la Calle’s Portraits of Homosocial Relations in Early Twentieth-Century Medellín”

Daniel Menzo is the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in Photography at Yale University Art Gallery, where his curated rotation of Mexican photography is up through November 2024.

Ina Alice Danila, “Destabilizing the Family Album: The Visual Bricolages of a Romanian Community in New York”

Ina Alice Danila is a PhD candidate at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Romania (photography) and recipient of a Fulbright Award in 2023.

Hyewon Yoon, “The Unmaking of the Community in the Work of Yoon JeongMee, Kim Oksun, and Lee Sunmin”

Hyewon Yoon is Assistant Professor of Art History and Theory in the Department of Painting at Seoul National University. 

Li Machado, “Ordinary: Queer Belonging in Shizu Saldamando’s Portraits of Friends”

Li Machado is a PhD Candidate at Temple University specializing in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art. 

Conclusion: 2:55–3:00 pm MST

Closing Remarks, CCP Auditorium*

Josie Johnson and Emilia Mickevicius, Symposium Co-Organizers

Archived Symposia

View 2022 Symposium

The second symposium of the Photography Network will be hosted jointly by Photography Network and Howard University in Washington, DC. The event will be hybrid (in-person and virtual).

The 2022 symposium theme is “Intersecting Photographies.” Scholarship in the history of photography has until recently focused predominantly on its technical capabilities, patronage, and modes of representation. This focus elides the longer histories of colonialism and imperialism that the medium fosters­—and in which it can potentially intervene. Recent scholarship—including Ariella Azoulay’s “Unlearning the Origins of Photography” (2018), Mark Sealy’s Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time (2019), and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie's (Seminole, Muscogee, Diné) “When is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?” (1998)—are among many projects reconceptualizing photography as a site of encounter and exchange, fraught with historical inequities brought by colonizing desires.

View 2023 Symposium

Photography Network’s third annual symposium will be held virtually and hosted jointly with the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. In honor of the UWC’s New Archival Visions Programme—an initiative to activate the university’s archival holdings through research, fellowships, and curatorial projects—this symposium considers the subject of frameworks in the study of photography. 

In recent years, “framing” and “reframing” have become buzzwords for describing new approaches to the study of photography, including the 2018 volume Photography Reframed: New Visions in Photographic Culture, the ReFrame project at the Harvard Art Museums launched in 2021, and the ongoing archival initiative, “Framing the Field: Photography's Histories in American Institutions.” Projects like the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2023 Field Guide to Photography and Media exhibition and catalogue and the recent Vision & Justice initiative encourage reflection on how histories of photography have been constructed and how certain interventions can be made to create a more equitable field moving forward. Such interventions might also draw on “reframing” projects from the global south that interrogate colonial and metropolitan categories and temporal schemas in the history of global photography, such as the 2020 Kronos special issue on “Other Lives of the Image” and the 2019 publication Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History. 

View 2021 Symposium

The First Symposium of the Photography Network was held virtually, jointly hosted by the Photography Network and Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen.

Over the last twenty years, the study of photography’s history has been characterized by, among other things, two opposing strands: a concentration on the photograph’s status as an object and a concern with the decidedly virtual quality of its images and practices. The 2019 FAIC conference “Material Immaterial: Photographs in the 21st Century” considered these two directions in photographic conservation, asking if the physical photograph still matters today as a source of teaching, learning, and scholarship when the intangibles of code now direct the production and archiving of images